


Ripples

by cadmean



Category: The Traitor Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Loyalty, Missing Scene, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 08:46:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17138669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadmean/pseuds/cadmean
Summary: Listen: The field-general Tain Hu, the Duchess Vultjag in all her glory, is a dead woman walking and she knows it.





	Ripples

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChristyCorr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChristyCorr/gifts).



The _Helbride_ cuts through the ocean’s tumultuous surface with little effort. The weather is accommodating and her crew is well-accustomed to the clipper’s little peculiarities, and so they are able to make swift passage through the vast waters separating the shores of Aurdwynn from the far-flung shore home to the Elided Keep.

She remembers little of the first few initial days of her stay aboard the ship, owed largely to the fact that she had been chained up in its brig, where the planks that make up all six sides of her prison are stuck together so tightly that no light from the outside shines through. The weeks that followed, too, were spent largely below-decks – a security measure, she was told, because nobody had the time to go fish her out of the water should she try and jump.

But here, now, close to journey’s end she stands atop the ship’s deck – her arms still chained tightly behind her, her feet bare against the wooden planks – and the breeze caressing the ruin of her captivity-starved body feels like a lover’s embrace.

She watches the rocky shore in front of her grow larger and larger as the minutes pass, and she doesn’t utter a single word. There is nothing left to say. Not until she sets foot down inside the Elided Keep and, at long last, once more comes face to face with her sworn lord.

It is only when she can start to make out the small figures lining the keep’s docks that the silence around her is finally broken.

“Tain Hu,” says the red-haired man standing beside her, all at once drawing himself up into a stiff, formal posture that looks terribly forced on him. He gestures to the two guards behind the woman, indicating for them to return her belowdecks to where, only a few weeks past, he had her chained on order of high treason against Falcrest and its Throne. As they grasp her by the shoulders, he turns to give her a sad little smile and announces, “We’ve arrived.”

 

* * *

 

This is how it goes: Tain Hu comes to in the bowels of a ship. Her wrists are loosely chained to a little metal ring set into the floor of the chamber she is in, and only a single lamp hung from the farthest wall illuminates the darkness around her. There is a dry moisture that’s set into the air and planks that make up her little prison room, and when she snakes out her tongue to wet her lips, the taste is that of sea-salt.

Movement just out of sight to her left has her snap her head up, and all the muscles in her neck and arms protest as she quickly forces herself up and into a seated position. Tain Hu keeps her expression as impassive as she can despite the pain, unwilling to give her Masquerade captors even that much; when she finally turns fully to look at what must no doubt be her jailor, she nevertheless can’t quite manage to keep the surprise from flitting across her face.

For a moment she thinks it’s Dziransi sitting there, but no: this man is slighter, younger too, and he looks by far more comfortable in his own skin than the Necessary King’s emissary ever did. His hair is a mane of brilliant red, brighter than the pelts of the foxes Tain Hu hunted all across her duchy; his skin, terribly pale, is like the snow through which she tracked her prey.

There is an awful, calculating sharpness to the man’s eyes when he closes the book in his hands and turns his head to look at her, and it reminds Tain Hu so much of Baru that she flinches back at the sight.

“Ah, Tain Hu,” the man with the rowan-red hair greets her in Ioylnic, betraying his Stakhi-tinged accent only around the vowels. “Awake at last. How are you?”

 

* * *

 

He goes by the name Apparitor, Tain Hu quickly learns, and he has questions. A great many of them, in fact, though she notes with interest how he takes painstaking care to dance around the one she had expected him to ask right from the start.

 _Are you comfortable?_ As well as she can be.

 _Would you like some food?_ She would, well-aware that he wouldn’t be going through all this trouble only to poison her at the first chance he gets.

 _Would you care to know what’s happened to your Duke Lachta?_ And again she would, but here he only smiles and offers her more food.

 _Would you like to know where we’re headed?_ She nods, but his answer means nothing to her. Only when he tells her that it’s where Baru has been sent does Tain Hu feel a shiver run down her spine.

 _Did Baru Cormorant confess at any point what she was going to do to you and the other traitor dukes, after the battle at Sieroch?_ Tain Hu’s turn to laugh, now.

And then, on the eve of the third day, asked just as Apparitor is ready to leave, one hand already poised over the handle of the door of her prison cell, _Why did you not run into the Wintercrest Mountains, like she told you to? Why did you come back?_

 

* * *

 

Here now, listen: The field-general Tain Hu, the Duchess Vultjag in all her glory, is a dead woman walking and she knows it.

Truthfully she never expected to come this far at all. When she’d taken hold of the reins of Xate Olake’s horse to turn it around and had whispered, “Uncle,” she’d fully expected him to kill her right then and there. Better to have her buried beneath the last winter snow than to let her fall into the Masquerade’s hands – at the very least he should have gone on without her. It would have been the sensible thing to do.

Neither of them were feeling particularly sensible, at that point.

And when the two of them had ridden back towards the blood-drenched fields of Sieroch, when they had encountered the Masquerade’s scouts, and even when she and Xate Olake had been led, bound and shackled, back into Treatymont – Tain Hu had expected every step to be her last.

Not once does she see Xate Yawa, there in the Cold Cellar, but when one morning the cell next to hers is empty Tain Hu figures that his sister must have come for Olake, one way or another. She waits, then, for her turn.

And only a handful of nights later, not too long after Olake’s disappearance, white-masked guards come for her. Their leader, looking like a great big carrion-bird with the metal beak clasped over his mouth and nose, waves a bowl full of odd-smelling incense under her nose until she passes out – and Tain Hu, as her consciousness fades, thinks: _This is it_. Her final thoughts are tinged with a deep, bone-wrenching regret that she couldn’t keep her vow to her queen.

The answer to Apparitor’s first real question of consequence: Despite everything Baru Cormorant is her sworn lord still, and Tain Hu has an oath to fulfill. Duty compels her. Duty and—

 

* * *

 

They settle into an easy, comfortable routine.

In the evenings – Tain Hu figures it must be evening, because Apparitor brings along proper food rather than the biscuits and water she gets throughout the rest of the day – Apparitor settles down on the wooden crate he’s put in the one corner of the room Tain Hu can’t reach. Sometimes he comes with an arm full of terrible rag-novels, which he tosses to her when he’s finished with them; other times he brings a board game and settles down on the floor across from Tain Hu and they play.

Always he prods at her with a wide array of questions.

Tain Hu doles out her answers like currency and knows when to leverage them like precious gold; they are all she has left to barter with.

She tells Apparitor of how she and Baru spent the winter in the north, and in return he tells her of how he first came to Baru with the offer of a rebellion for an exaltation. Apparitor asks Tain Hu about her childhood, so close to the Mansion Hussacht; she has him tell her what he does in service to Falcrest’s Throne when he’s not ferrying about prisoners.

Tain Hu learns of the fates of the other dukes and duchesses of the rebellion, and Apparitor’s smile never falters even as she hisses abuse at him for it. Afterwards, once she has collected herself again, she talks to him in exchange of how she and Baru once went stag-hunting with Oathsfire; how they watched the moon rise together from the deck of one of Unuxekome’s ships; of the long nights Baru spent with Lyxaxu talking philosophy and theoretical eventualities while Tain Hu sat by and listened with a secret smile.

Apparitor reacts to that like she imagines Baru would; his face scrunches up briefly and he raises an eyebrow at her and he doesn’t say anything at all. Is there a flicker of regret she sees, too? No, not in Apparitor’s eyes, but perhaps it would be there in Baru’s – and perhaps that she wishes to be able to see it there says more about Tain Hu than it does about her lord.

 

* * *

 

“The kind of power Baru Cormorant wants always comes with a price,” Apparitor says one evening, eyes fixed on some distant, faraway shore while he toys with an unpolished lens for the telescope he’s been telling her about. “It’s a barbaric tradition, really, but moreso for you than for her, I suppose. Chained to the rocks of the shore to be drowned by the tide – a grueling death.” He pauses and Tain Hu, well-versed in such things, can appreciate his attempts at dramatic flourish if nothing else. “I expect she’ll have you executed without any second thoughts, won’t she?”

There is a note of aching familiarity in his voice, and Tain Hu laughs at his question and thinks, _Finally._

“You won’t be the first to be sent to fight the tide,” he tells her over the course of the next night in between sips of the clear Stakhi vodka he’s brought along. “Those rocks have become intimately familiar with despair, I’d wager.”

Apparitor, with his brilliant red hair and his easy smiles would have her believe that it is merely a matter of formality, her execution. That they will arrive at the Elided Keep, where Baru will greet them; that Tain Hu will be chained to the island’s rocky shore, where Baru will beg for the Throne to spare her.

What Apparitor doesn’t say: Just as Tain Hu won’t be the first to fight the tide, neither will Baru be the first to be brought to heel because of it.

He doesn’t put it in so many words, of course, but when he lies he has the same guarded glint to his eyes as Baru so often did when they were discussing their plans for the rebellion’s decisive battle, and even had Tain Hu not been wary of Apparitor from the start that would’ve tipped her off.

She has spent enough time with Baru Cormorant over the course of the last year to have seen that kind of self-deception up close and in detail.

 

* * *

 

Apparitor talks too much, but what Tain Hu has been able to glean in the space his silences span is this: There are ties that bind Apparitor. An invisible collar wrapped around his throat with enough give to let him do as he pleases for the most part, but never so slack that he can forget that it’s there entirely. And when the rest of Falcrest’s masked cryptarchs decide to call on Apparitor, he will have no choice but to answer.

The Faceless Throne, Tain Hu is sure, will want to wrap chains like that around Baru, too.

Here, then, the thought that comes to her unbidden, the choice she makes without bothering to give the alternative much thought: Tain Hu will not let them.

If Baru is to save her native lands, if she wants to rewrite the maps so that they all no longer show Sousward but Taranoke again – if Baru is to accomplish what Tain Hu couldn’t do for Aurdwynn – then she needs to be unfettered.

In her studies of the Fools' Rebellion, in the duels she has fought for pleasure and for honor, and through all the skirmishes she has led in defense of the lands and the people of her duchy, Tain Hu has learned by blood an invaluable truth: In order to plan your response to an enemy’s attack, you first have to know how and where they will strike you. Then, and only then, can you begin to craft your attempt at retaliation.

She can see the attack coming for her sworn lord now, can imagine clearly how it will strike Baru at her most vulnerable.

And so Tain Hu, ever her lord’s loyal field-general, begins to sketch out the details of her riposte.

 

* * *

 

First: she takes the initiative, wrestles it from out of Apparitor’s hands before he’s even aware that she’s no longer on the defensive.

“Tell me about what will happen after Baru drowns me,” she says the next time they’re setting up a game of Royalty.

Apparitor flinches at her blunt question, and Tain Hu frowns at him and thinks, _Baru would have done better._

“Itinerant will have some task ready for her, I’m sure,” he says after a moment. “Or perhaps Hesychast. I’ve been informed that they will both be joining us at the Elided Keep. Baru will formally declare her new name as a cryptarch, and then we will all of us take a celebratory dinner together, and then, as it must, life will go on. Itinerant will have something planned for her.”

Tain Hu puts on an innocent smile full of wolf-teeth. “Like they have things planned for you?”

“Quite,” he grinds out in response, and takes a deep slug of his wine.

Apparitor is a bound man, tugged around by the hold the Faceless Throne has on him – by the knives they have pointed at the hostage he couldn’t kill.

Baru will need to do better than that, because Tain Hu has seen her homeland sacrificed in the name of Baru’s quest for power. She has seen her friends and her allies and her people killed for a cause she didn’t even know she was investing in at the time.

That blood-price has been paid in full already – and Tain Hu will not allow it to have been paid in vain.

 

* * *

 

Second: the follow-up step, to keep her balanced.

At night, when there is nothing but silence and the steady lapping of the waves against the hull of the ship to keep her company, Tain Hu thinks of fox-eyed Lyxaxu, and how she hadn’t been able to fathom why the philosopher-duke would betray Baru in the midst of battle. Thinks of how it took her until her uncle roughly shook her awake and passed on her sworn lord’s final orders – to head north, to _leave_ – that the knot of confusion in her head finally untied itself and she thought, _Oh._

She grasps those feelings of hurt, of betrayal, as tightly as she can; holds them close to her bones and vows to never let them go.

When she finally meets Baru once more, Tain Hu will need to be decisive. She will need to wound her sworn queen, to cut her deeply enough that the wound can never completely heal. Because if Baru forgets the wound she forgets Tain Hu and with it all she’s – they’ve – sacrificed in Aurdwynn, and that Tain Hu cannot bear.

 

* * *

 

Third, final—

Tain Hu opens her hands and lets the dice fall, and trusts herself not to the ykari’s guiding hands but to three things.

One. The cryptarchs’ unspoken need to keep Baru tethered to Tain Hu. They will allow her time to speak to Baru, once they arrive at the Elided Keep, because they will need Baru to remember how much Tain Hu means to her. They will want Baru to remember every single line of her face as the waters rise around her; they will want her to think of Tain Hu’s smile and the ways her eyes crinkle while Baru debates whether to beg for mercy, and so they will graciously permit Baru to meet her field-general face-to-face one last time. This is where Tain Hu will strike, where she will hand over the blade of her counter-attack to her queen and hope that her queen can see through her own grief long enough to wield it.

Two. Baru’s ruthlessness. Tain Hu has seen it as they stood side-by-side inside her tent, leaning across a map of Aurdwynn and planning for battle. The way Baru tilts her head to the side just so whenever a particularly cunning thought presents itself to her, and how she smiles, so pleased with herself, when she figures out the solution to a problem that’s been nagging at her for a while. She is so beautiful in those moments, and she will know how she must proceed as long as Tain Hu lays the groundwork for her.

And, above all: Tain Hu’s own desperate devotion. Duchy Vultjag is too harsh and too cold a land to breed much in the way of warmth, but if the terrible winter Tain Hu spent at Baru’s side instilled anything in her it’s loyalty to her queen-for-a-night. She pledged herself, body and soul, heart and mind, to Baru’s cause. And even now, Tain Hu doesn’t regret her oath of fealty – would do it again, without second thought.

 _Love is a terrible thing_ , Xate Olake once told her when she was very young and too inexperienced to guess at what he truly meant.

Love is a terrible thing indeed, Tain Hu now agrees. If she has her way – and she will, she must, because she is her queen’s field-general and she has _never_ failed her – it will bring Falcrest to its knees.

 

* * *

 

Apparitor guides her to a seat in the ship’s small sideboat with a steady hand on her shoulder and a soft smile and distant, guarded eyes. He’s had her bound from wrists to ankles, trussed up so securely that any real movement is impossible. When he has her settled down and two of his crew have taken their spots at the sideboat’s oars, he waves at his remaining people on the _Helbride_ and motions for the rowers to get to work.

Masked, rowan-red hair fanning out behind him in the breeze, Apparitor cuts an imposing figure. But silhouetted as he is against the bright blue sky, Tain Hu can see the invisible noose wrapped tight around his throat, pulling Apparitor in directions he doesn’t care for but cannot fight because doing so would be fatal to more people than just him alone.

Baru, Tain Hu thinks as he draws the hood in his hands down over her head, will look more brilliant still with no chains at all to hold her.

 

* * *

 

Listen:

One-two-three.

The dice fall.

One-two . . . three.

This is the sound of a heart slowly ceasing to beat.

 

* * *

 

And listen, listen: taking a life is easy, but this? This is how you shape a life. This is how you hold it in your hands; this is how, with the last desperate strength left in you, you squeeze your fingers around it as tight as you can and hope that you’ve left an imprint.

Aurdwynn is forever lost to Tain Hu, and she knows it. There is no place for her in all the world anymore, save for here, chained to a rock as the tide comes in.

And, the terrible, awful beauty of it, Tain Hu’s self-sacrificial riposte struck as the water fills her lungs: Baru will be unfettered. She will be the dagger Tain Hu flings at the very heart of Falcrest with her dying breath.

Oh, _kuye lam_. You will be beautiful.


End file.
